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I run a site called Propaganda Guard. I am passionate freedom and liberating thinkers to combat the stupefaction of the populace.
PropagandaGuard.com was created for the purpose of alerting citizens to the ever present dangers of propaganda, helping them to recognize it and then finally to protect themselves and their families from the corrupting effects. You can not protect yourself from things you don’t know or understand.
Understanding does not stem from a simple dictionary or
wikipedia definition. It is hoped that citizens will turn off the television set pick up a book and start getting a deep knowledge of the subject so that they can warn others.

Wake Up- Your Life Depends On It

Monthly Archives: April 2017

WASHINGTON – President Trump plans to be in Israel May 23 to help the Jewish state celebrate the 50th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem June 7 during the Six Day War of 1967.

Israel is looking forward to the arrival, with Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely saying: “Since Trump entered the White House, we feel that we have a true friend there. When he arrives, we will happily welcome him.”

Are you a true friend of Israel? Have you shown it by visiting?

Maybe it’s time, because this is a big year for the Jewish state.

Not only is Israel observing the 50th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem, it’s also the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration that set in motion the chain of events that led to revived statehood after nearly 1,900 years. It’s also the 70th year since the United Nations vote to re-create the nation.

Benjamin Netanyahu

“If you have been musing for years about going to Israel, this is the time, this is the year,” says Joseph Farah, founder of WND, who leads groups every year to the Jewish state. “It’s time to stop procrastinating by reciting that old line about ‘next year in Jerusalem.’ Haven’t you been saying that for too many years?”

Ambassador David M. Friedman

Think about it:

June 7, 2017, will be the 50th anniversary of Israel’s retaking of its capital city of Jerusalem.

Nov. 29, 2017, is the 70th anniversary of the U.N.’s approval of the plan that returned Israel to statehood after a dispersion that lasted nearly 1,900 years.

Nov. 2, 2017, will be the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Balfour Declaration of the United Kingdom’s pledge to seek the reformation of the Jewish state in the region of Palestine.

In other words, 2017 is a very special year for Israel, wouldn’t you say? Wouldn’t it be a great year to visit? Of course, it would be. You should be a part of this history, says Farah.

“That’s why I’d like to invite you to come with me and my wife, Elizabeth, this November to celebrate with the people of Israel, to see this land where Jesus, the prophets and King David walked and for the chance to meet, see and hear, in person, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and David Friedman, the new U.S. ambassador to Israel,” he says.

“If you come with us, you’ll be in Israel on the very day the country is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration,” he points out. “So naturally, we’d like you to make your decision to join us by latest, June 7, the 50th anniversary of the reunification of Israel’s eternal capital.”

In addition to hearing from Netanyahu and Friedman, the Farahs will be talking to the group about the Hebrew roots of their faith.

“Visiting Israel is a life-changing experience any time you visit. It will transform the way you understand the Bible and experience God,” says Farah. “But this year is very, very special – especially when the theme of the tour is exploring the undeniable Hebrew foundation of the Christian faith. What a year to see all the sites, walk the streets of Jerusalem, visit ancient synagogues where Jesus almost certainly taught, float in the Dead Sea, get baptized in the Jordan River, cruise on the Sea of Galilee and more.”

This trip in November is designed as an eye-opening, life-transforming tour that will allow you to see your Bible studies in HD. Picture yourself journeying through the ancient streets of Jerusalem and praying at the Western Wall. See the bustling metropolis of Tel Aviv. Worship at the empty tomb.

“So, I hope and pray to see you there. It will be an opportunity to make lifelong friends, to worship in the land God loves so much and the place from which Jesus will rule and reign for a thousand years in His Coming Kingdom,” says Farah.

The theory of human-caused global warming is straightforward. The level of the so-called “pollutant” carbon dioxide, or CO2, is rising in the atmosphere, causing a worldwide increase in temperatures that ultimately will have a catastrophic effect on the planet.

To prevent this catastrophe, a vast regulatory infrastructure needs to be created, even if it means sacrificing jobs, economic efficiency, personal freedoms or national sovereignty itself.

But what if CO2 isn’t a pollutant?

That’s precisely the shocking finding of a new report from statistician Jim Wallace, climatologist John Christy and meteorologist Joe D’Aleo, who contend the Environmental Protection Agency erred when it ruled CO2 is a pollutant in 2009.

The researchers claim they could find no evidence that rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations “have had a statistically significant impact on any of the 14 temperature data sets that we analyzed.”

“These analysis results would appear to leave very, very little doubt but that EPA’s claim of a Tropical Hot Spot (THS), caused by rising atmospheric CO2 levels, simply does not exist in the real world,” the report said.

“The left wants the public to believe that human-caused climate change is scientific law, like the laws of gravity and motion,” he told WND. “Instead, human-caused climate change/global warming is a flawed hypothesis that should be discarded into the dustbin of other failed theories. Referring to carbon dioxide – a natural atmospheric component necessary for life – as a pollutant is insane. It’s no different than labeling H2O a pollutant.”

But the EPA did make the “insane” decision to label CO2 a pollutant in 2009, thus providing a justification for the the Obama administration to issue sweeping regulations cracking down on energy companies, industrial facilities, farms and vehicle manufactures.

Recently, U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., author of “The Greatest Hoax,” denounced the kinds of tactics Obama’s EPA employed. He told WND’s Alicia Powe the “greatest problem we’ve had in this country has emanated from the Environmental Protection Agency.”

“[The EPA] was really set up to be concerned about the environment and pass regulations that we needed to do,” Inhofe said. “But then with the Obama administration, he got away from that and started worrying about regulating things the American people don’t want… The thing that President Obama did was try to get things through regulation that he couldn’t get through legislation.”

“What’s truly sad and funny about this entire episode is that it took a study to determine that CO2, a gas that supports all life on earth, is not a pollutant,” he said. “Plants need it to live and mammals exhale it and yet it was somehow labeled by the government as a pollutant. This is a point that has been repeatedly made by global warming skeptics over the years. The news is as revelatory as finding that ‘water is wet’ but it seems some people need to be reminded of those simple facts every now and then.”

Fitch accused the liberal media of misleading Americans about CO2 and the larger global warming issue.

“Branding is everything and the mainstream media has done a fine job in branding CO2 as the ‘enemy within’ without ever questioning the basic premise as to whether or not CO2 is really a problem,” he explained. “They have used the ‘consensus’ idea but have never bothered looking into the nuances of that finding, nor the arguments that debated those findings. The term ‘consensus’ is just a cheap and easy way to ignore any differing conclusions or the opinions of scientists who disagree.

“They also never bother to say what the ‘consensus’ is about and what it is not about. There most certainly is not a consensus that supports the hyperbolic alarmist claims made by some of the movement’s most vocal supporters. So to say there is a scientific consensus and then cite Al Gore’s predictions of melted ice caps and New York City underwater, conflates two very different positions. It tries to give scientific credence to ridiculous predictions.”

“Global warming,” asserts Sussman, simply functions as an excuse for leftists to fulfill their political goals. The supposed scientific rationale behind the agenda is all but irrelevant.

“The left sees global warming/climate change as their magic key to destroy industrial capitalism and implement socialism,” he said. “In the process it’s also a scandalous opportunity for a few wealthy liberals to make loads of money off of green investment scams that are subsidized with taxpayer dollars. The left, aided by their friends in the liberal media, are so stubborn and long-suffering that theylll never cave on this one; they won’t let the facts get in the way of their ideology.”

Sussman similarly dismissed the recent “March for Science,” not as a defense of scientific but as a “fresh public venue for Trump haters to parade their ignorant nonsense.”

And Fitch urged Americans and those who value real knowledge to resist the politicization of science and the dogma surrounding “global warming.”

“The March for Science was a confusing event,” he commented. “It risks associating the term ‘science’ with ‘left-wing politics’ which would ultimately not be good for those who claim a scientific mindset. But what I think is more damaging is the idolization of science. It risks becoming religious with people marching through the streets proclaiming that if we just all looked to science we would find utopia, heaven on Earth.

“Science is a practice, not an entity, but it is being treated like some god that must be appeased with praise and money. It is this same reason that I think many of the people marching for science were probably dyed in the wool global warming alarmists. They have created a religion out of global warming and science is supposedly their god. But, like many religions, dissent is not tolerated well and anyone who disagrees is branded a heretic.”

Democratic legislators in California hope to add their state to the list of those that have adopted religious freedom bills.

However, unlike other bills intended to protect individual rights of conscience with regard to same-sex “marriage,” the bill effectively protects Islamic terrorists by barring law enforcement and immigration authorities from collecting information regarding religious beliefs, an expert on radical Islam says.

“This bill has nothing to do with genuine religious freedom issues,” Robert Spencer, co-founder of Stop Islamization of America and the Freedom Defense Initiative told WND. “Instead, it is intended to hamper law-enforcement by being a Shariah-compliant bill to hamper legitimate attempts to keep us safe.”

SB 31, labeled the California Religious Freedom Act, would appear to be in the same vein as bills passed by state legislatures in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage. It passed the state Senate April 4 and now is in the hands of the Assembly.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision, “gay” activists have become increasingly militant, demanding everyone not just tolerate but endorse their lifestyle.

Same-sex couples have targeted Christian businesses by asking artists to create works that go against their deeply held religious beliefs regarding the sanctity of marriage. When the artists refuse to lend their creative talents to endorse a ceremony they consider unbiblical, they have been hauled into court and told their First Amendment rights must take a back seat to a “gay” couples right not to be offended.

To fight against the infringement of religious liberty, 21 states have passed religious freedom bills modeled on the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act that was signed into law by President Bill Clinton. The laws attempt to strike a balance by prohibiting discrimination against a person based on their sexual orientation, while preserving the right of an individual to refuse participation in an event such as a same-sex wedding.

With California known as a far-left state it, may be a bit of a shock that Democrats would pass such a bill, until one reads the text.

The bill, co-sponsored by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, “would prohibit a state or local agency or a public employee acting under color of law from providing or disclosing to the federal government personal information regarding a person’s religious beliefs, practices, or affiliation, as specified, when the information is sought for compiling a database of individuals based on religious belief, practice, or affiliation, national origin, or ethnicity for law enforcement or immigration purposes.”

CAIR is regarded by the FBI as a Hamas front in the U.S., by the Justice Department as an unindicted co-conspirator in a terror-funding plot and by the United Arab Emirates as a terrorist organization

The bill also prohibits state and local law-enforcement agencies and employees from “collecting personal information on the religious beliefs, practices, or affiliation of any individual, except as part of a targeted investigation.”

It was discovered after the 2015 San Bernardino terrorist attack which killed 14 and wounded 22 others that Tashfeen Malik, wife of fellow terrorist shooter Syed Rizwan, posted on social media as far back as 2012 her support for violent jihadism. Government officials came under fire for not properly vetting Malik prior to issuing her a visa.

In the wake of the shootings, many in law-enforcement called for greater scrutiny that would include a review of social media before issuing a visa. President Donald Trump ran on a platform of extreme vetting that would include, among other things, requiring visa applicants to turn over a list of their social media accounts for scrutiny.

However, under SB 31, local law-enforcement would be prohibited from using this valuable resource or sharing it with federal officials.

Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute in California, who has long been an advocate for legitimate religious freedom, agrees with Spencer.

“Law enforcement needs and uses all types of information on a suspect in order to access potential motives to help identify a suspect or potential suspect in a crime. This will be a great hindrance to law enforcement.”

Dacus said PJI is a strong advocate for religious liberty for everyone, but he believes the bill goes beyond preventing genuine discrimination and will provide cover for Muslim terrorists by preventing law-enforcement from stopping them before they commit a crime.

“No one wants to see a person stigmatized because of their faith or face discrimination because of their beliefs,” Dacus told WND. “But this bill goes far beyond that and actually prevents law-enforcement from being able to prevent possible crimes from being committed.

“The First Amendment exists to protect everyone’s religious freedom but this doesn’t mean we need to tie the hands of law-enforcement when it comes to a proper investigation to prevent a crime that they have good reason to believe may be committed if pre-emptive measures are not taken,” he said.

But the greatest enemy to free speech and independence of thought isn’t antifa or government officials – it’s journalists, the very people who are supposed to be free speech’s greatest defenders, says an expert.

“They definitely have a large role in this,” said Greer. “If you look at the big events we’ve seen over the last five years, the media has usually played a big role in lionizing the protesters and lionizing the campus educators who are pushing an agenda. We saw this at the University of Virginia, with the infamous gang rape hoax. The media believed it wholeheartedly, without any hint of skepticism, and if anyone expressed skepticism about this case, that person was a rape denier who supports evil white fraternity boys that rape whoever they want.

“I remember the first people who expressed skepticism about that case got lit up by the liberal press, and of course they turned out to be correct when they said there was something fishy about the case and there were things that were not adding up. But they still got torn into. And the media made everyone believe in that case before it was disproven, which furthered the narrative there is this ‘rape culture’ that is prevalent on college campuses.”

Pettibone argued the media no longer see their role as being good journalists but instead serves as narrative police, whose job it is to destroy people who make certain arguments or promote certain ideas. Greer agreed enthusiastically.

“They see themselves as the gatekeepers,” Greer said. “They want to determine what is allowed to be spoken in public, what views are allowed, what ideas you can express and what is ‘beyond the pale.’ In the 2016 election, the media abolished any pretense of being objective while covering Trump. They wanted to let America know that whatever Trump was doing was ‘beyond the pale,’ ‘unforgivable,’ ‘irredeemable,’ ‘deplorable.’ They did that over and over again.

“They have these lines they want to push. And when people cross those lines, they write hit pieces on them, investigate their whole lives, they want to bring them down. They don’t try to present news without bias, they just want to tell America what it is ‘ok’ to believe and what supposedly violates our ‘core values.’”

Though journalists claim to be investigating the truth or standing up to abuses of power, Greer contends they are simply defending the interests of their social class.

“It’s all about policing,” he observed. “It’s not about broadcasting what’s happening in the world, but about broadcasting the view of the journalists. And journalists are a class unto themselves. They are all part of this urban elite who live in cities like New York and San Francisco, the lawyers and the financiers, and they have shared interests. And the journalist class simply expresses these interests in the stories they cover and in how they cover them. They are simply defending the interests of this urban elite class. And they get very upset when you point this out.”

“There’s only one form of identity politics accepted by the mainstream media, pushed by the mainstream, pushed by higher education, and that’s this form of minority identity politics,” he told Pettibone. “It’s this form of identity politics where they see themselves as oppressed victims, coming together to unite against the bad, old, dominant [white] majority that’s ‘oppressing’ them.”

“We see all these fake hoaxes that supposedly happened just after Trump was elected,” Greer said. “Someone would say, ‘Oh, I saw something written saying kill all black people,’ and of course it turned out that person had drawn it themselves. But that gets tons and tons of coverage. Yet when a white Trump supporter is told ‘screw all white people’ or ‘shut up cracker,’ that’s not reported, even though that’s far more common in higher education, particularly after Trump won.”

Partially as a result of this media climate, Greer argues an entire generation of college students sees it as their mission not to debate and study ideas, but to shut down and destroy anyone who holds “problematic” values. The eventual result will be an even more paranoid and hysterical media climate. And he warns conservatives not to assume college students will simply grow out of it.

Indeed, the supposedly fragile “snowflakes” will dominate the America of the future.

“This is not just going to be limited to college campuses,” Greer said. “These kids who are demanding safe spaces and restricting free speech are going to go into the real world and demand it in the workplace, in their communities, in their neighborhoods and their government. They’re going to have a larger effect on society, it’s not just going to be limited to college campuses.”

For that reason, Greer expresses frustration with older conservatives who contemptuously dismiss leftist students as wimps or weaklings. Instead, Greer contends the leftist radicals conquering the college campuses are not only winning, but are animated by a powerful sense of rage against white America.

“This is not a generational thing,” he said. “This is not the result of helicopter parenting or coddled millennials. The campus insanity has a strong racial element, a strongly anti-traditional America. It wants to bring down the ‘bad old America’ and replace it with the new America that is more diverse and tolerant. And I need to bring up that victimhood culture is a new moral culture finding a home on college campuses… They only take those who are part of the protected classes seriously.”

Still, Greer sees signs of hope. He believes conservatives are far less willing to let themselves be policed or shamed by left-wing media outlets than they were before the rise of President Donald Trump. And, as a result, the mainstream media is losing power, something Greer argues should be celebrated.

“Liberals don’t have the same kind of power they once had to shut down speech they don’t like or deemed politically incorrect that they had two or three years ago,” he said. “Their old buzzwords – ‘Nazi,’ ‘white supremacist,’ ‘racist’ – it’s lost a lot of its old power in the age of Trump. People don’t care. They call everyone a white supremacist.

“If they’re calling the president of the United States a white supremacist neo-Nazi fascist dictator, a lot of Americans are going to say they might disagree with Trump but don’t see him as a Nazi or a white supremacist. And a lot of these racial agitators are now seriously arguing that all white people are white supremacists, so, naturally, a lot of people think that’s ridiculous and doesn’t make sense. They just use these buzzwords to silence their opponents, to suppress speech. These words have no meaning anymore. And I think most of America sees this.”

George Soros appears to have fixed his eye on a new enemy – a proposed Article V Convention.

Operatives from Soros-funded organizations have been caught on camera lobbying state legislators in at least two states to oppose an Article V Convention resolution.

Anthony Gutierrez of Common Cause Texas, a Soros-funded group, testified against Article V Convention legislation before the Texas legislature, and Ted Boettner of the West Virginia Center on Budget & Policy, sponsored by Soros’ Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, lobbied against such legislation in the Mountain State.

Common Cause and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities have also put out policy papers attacking the effort to call an Article V Convention.

In fact, 230 left-wing organizations have organized to oppose an Article V Convention. The groups include the Brennan Center for Justice, the Center for Media and Democracy, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Democracy 21, People for the American Way and the League of Women Voters. These 230 organizations, many of which are funded by Soros, put out a statement calling an Article V Convention “a threat to every American’s constitutional rights and civil liberties.”

David Super, a Georgetown law professor who served as general counsel to Soros’ Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, has also attacked the idea of an Article V Convention through op-eds in multiple major media outlets.

So what exactly are Soros and his underlings fighting against? The Article V Convention, also known as an Amendments Convention, is a provision America’s Founding Fathers included in Article V of the Constitution. It is one of two methods by which the Constitution may be amended. To hold such a convention, two-thirds of the state legislatures must pass an application calling for it. Amendments proposed at the convention would then need to be ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures to become part of the Constitution.

Citizens for Self-Governance, through its Convention of States Project, is currently undertaking an effort to push the necessary 34 state legislatures to call for an Article V Convention to propose amendments that would limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government. So far, 10 states have passed an application to call for such a convention.

“They’re socialists and Marxists and elitists, and they would like to see the government control everything rather than individuals have liberty and freedom, and they do not want any power devolved from Washington because they can have better control over it there,” Coburn declared.

In their statement opposing an Article V Convention, the 230 left-leaning organizations sounded an alarm.

“An Article V convention is a dangerous threat to the U.S. Constitution, our democracy, and our civil rights and liberties. There is no language in the U.S. Constitution to limit a convention to one issue and there is reason to fear that a convention once called will be able to consider any amendments to the constitution that the delegates want to consider.”

The groups urged state legislatures to oppose any resolution to call for an Article V Convention “in order to protect all Americans’ constitutional rights and privileges from being put at risk and up for grabs.”

But that is simple fearmongering, according to Coburn.

“That’s the inflammatory language that they use based on fear so they can accomplish what they want rather than accomplish what people want,” the former senator said.

Coburn pointed out an Article V Convention is only allowed to consider amendments related to the topic specified in the 34 applications that trigger the convention. So if any delegates were to propose amendments beyond the scope of the applications, it would be out of order. Even if a majority of delegates did vote for such a rogue amendment, the amendment could be challenged in court for failing to meet the requirements of the application. And even if the courts somehow declared a rogue amendment constitutional, it is unlikely three-fourths of states would ratify the amendment under such circumstances.

Soros and his ilk have not always opposed the idea of an Article V Convention. In 2014 several left-wing organizations pushed for a Convention of States to overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling and end corporate personhood. Groups that latched onto the effort included Wolf PAC, Alliance for Democracy, Center for Media and Democracy, Code Pink, Progressive Democrats of America and Sierra Club.

Coburn noted the hypocrisy of these leftists.

“You ask them the question: ‘Well, if you’re saying all these bad things can happen in a convention, why would you want one for Citizens United?’” the senator said. “The typical elitist argument is that, ‘We can do it, but anybody else other than us in the elite probably couldn’t do this without us losing all our rights.’”

But Coburn considers that a ridiculous argument.

“Remember, this isn’t a constitutional convention,” he reminded. “This is a convention of states making recommendations to the states about things that should be changed in the Constitution. So if you drill down on it, you would have to have 38 states say, ‘We want to do all this bad stuff to the Constitution.’”

Daniel Horowitz, senior editor at Conservative Review and author of “Stolen Sovereignty: How to Stop Unelected Judges From Transforming America,” said no other movement has identified some sort of systemic solution to the real problems in American government better than the Convention of States movement. He said it’s becoming clear that electing Republicans isn’t good enough to fix what’s wrong with the country.

“I think more than ever the rationale for Article V is becoming very clear, because many people have been feeling the sense of desperation for the past few years, noting that the Republican Party has become an even more ineffective tool for combating this constitutional crisis, combating this social transformation, the growth of government,” Horowitz told WND.

Horowitz acknowledged many people voted for Trump believing he could “drain the swamp” and break the D.C. monopoly’s chokehold on the American people, but the president has disappointed in many ways so far. That’s where the Convention of States comes in.

“The best aspect of the Article V movement is the fact that they recognize that what we’re doing is not working, that we’re not one election away from making America great again,” Horowitz declared. “You’re not going to make America great by electing any one individual.

“I think people are noticing just a few months into this presidency that on a lot of very core issues, things really are not fundamentally changing on the growth of government, the growth of spending, Obamacare, even with refugees and immigration, because you have basically a corrupted political system.”

Coburn also sees the system, not President Trump, as the fundamental problem.

“I’m not that critical of what he’s done so far,” the former senator said. “The problem is you’re not ever going to change the politicos. What you have to change is the amount of power they have over our lives, and the way to do that is you devolve that back to the states like our founders intended.

“They never intended this much power to be in Washington in the first place, and the way you do that is limiting the scope of jurisdiction, putting term limits on members of Congress and forcing a balanced budget amendment. So you can do all that, and we’ll get it done, and the reason we’re seeing George Soros and his organizations [oppose us] is they’re starting to get worried about it.”

Within eyesight of South Korean border troops in the Demilitarized Zone is a village established by the North Korean government shortly after the end of the Korean War.

Called Kijong-dong, or “Peace Village,” it’s uninhabited, with lights that operate on automatic timers to present an illusion of human activity.

North Korea’s ‘Peace Village’

The sham village is an apt metaphor for the relationship with Pyongyang over the past two decades that has brought the two nations, in the words of President Trump, on the verge of a “major, major conflict.”

Pyongyang’s chief tactic could be described as “nuclear blackmail,” essentially issuing periodic threats to launch a nuclear missile at U.S. allies in Asia, or the U.S. itself, followed by negotiations, an easing of sanctions and aid.

Relations with Pyongyang over the past two decades shows “the appeasement of Pyongyang is a fool’s errand,” says analyst Joshua Stanton.

Last November, he summarized North Korea’s recent history of broken agreements.

“North Korea has violated or summarily withdrawn from an armistice, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, two IAEA safeguards agreements, an inter-Korean denuclearization agreement, two agreed frameworks, a joint denuclearization statement, the Leap Day agreement, and six U.N. Security Council resolutions,” Stanton said.

And yet, he wrote, “the most stubborn ‘engagers’ of Pyongyang look on this clear historical record and declare that it calls for yet another piece of paper.”

The U.N. Security Council met Friday to discuss measures to counter North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs after the communist regime made several military shows of strength in recent weeks, including a missile test. After the meeting, Pyongyang conducted another missile test.

The United States sent warships to the region and began installing a controversial anti-missile system in South Korea earlier this week.

Propaganda poster of North Korea’s founding ruler, Kim Il Sung, with his wife Kim Jong Suk and son Kim Jong Il, who succeeded him

‘Self-reliance’

Since 1948, North Korea has been under the one-man rule of a dynasty that began with Kim Il Sung, “the great leader,” who developed a cult of personality centered on the state philosophy of Juche.

Usually translated as “self-reliance,” Juche is described by the government as Kim Il Sung’s “original, brilliant and revolutionary contribution to national and international thought.” It holds that an individual is “the master of his destiny,” and the North Korean masses are to act as the “masters of the revolution and construction” to achieve true socialism.

Raised in a Presbyterian family during Japanese colonial rule, North Korea’s founder, who was installed by the Soviet Union, is cast in official propaganda as a messianic figure. According to the mythology, he was born on Korea’s highest peak, Mount Paektu, beneath twin rainbows in a log cabin during the armed struggle against the Japanese occupiers. Propaganda posters often employ the imagery of pristine, mountain-top snow to communicate the doctrine of the Korean people as a pure, unblemished race.

Kim Il Sung was succeeded by his son, “the dear leader,” Kim Jong Il, who died in 2011, after which his son Kim Jong Un, the current leader, took over.

Four years after Kim Il Sung’s death in 1994, the presidency was eliminated from the constitution, and he was named as “Eternal President of the Republic.”

The North Korean government’s view of the United States can be seen in a memorandum issued by its foreign ministry last fall titled “The DPRK’s Strengthening of its Nuclear Forces Is a Righteous Choice to Defend Itself from the Extreme Moves of the U.S. to Stifle It.”

Kim Jong Un casts a ballot. North Korean elections typically have only one candidate for each position or seat who receives 100 percent of the vote.

It’s not nuclear tests that are to blame for the tensions, the communist government contends, it’s “the U.S. hostile policy.”

The nine-page memo reads in part:

All the facts above clearly substantiate the truth that the root cause of escalated tension on the Korean peninsula lies with the U.S. hostile policy and nuclear threats against the DPRK, not the latter’s nuclear and missile tests.

The DPRK has chosen the road of possessing nuclear weapons as a self-defensive measure to safeguard its state and system from the constant nuclear threat of the U.S. We are strengthening our nuclear forces both in quality and quantity, holding fast to the line of simultaneously developing the national economy and nuclear forces as our strategic line.

The U.S. should face up to the new strategic position of the DPRK and take actual measures to show that they are willing to scrap its anachronistic hostile policy and nuclear threat against the DPRK.

This, and only this will be the first base of resolving all the issues.

North Korea’s definition of “hostile policy” includes “U.N. and U.S. sanctions, South Korea’s defensive and deterrent military exercises, missile defense, criticism of Kim Jong Un’s crimes against humanity, and quite possibly the First Amendment right of private citizens to ridicule the dictator.”

Stanton, who served as an Army judge advocate in South Korea from 1998 to 2002 and as a fellow at the House Foreign Affairs Committee, advising on North Korea-related legislation, said what North Korea really wants is a peace treaty negotiation.

“The longer and more inconclusive, the better,” he added.

“Its diplomatic strategy is to draw the U.S. and South Korea into an extended ‘peace process’ in which it would make a series of up-front demands (the lifting of sanctions) in exchange for (at most) a partial freeze of its nuclear programs, which would effectively recognize it as a de facto nuclear weapons state,” he said.

Stanton testified in 2006 before the House International Relations Committee, as it was then known, regarding the state of the U.S.-South Korean alliance.

He said that if Pyongyang had its way, it would also demand the end to U.S.-South Korean military exercises, the curtailment of missile defense, and other actions that would ensure its nuclear and military hegemony over South Korea.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un

“Then, Pyongyang would demand an end to diplomatic and humanitarian criticism of its regime, censorship of anti-regime leaflets, demonstrations, and satirical films — in short, a limited recognition of its political supremacy over Seoul that would end in a one-country-two-systems Korea under North Korean domination, with Pyongyang gradually escalating its financial and political demands.”

In 2012, shortly after Kim Jong Un took power, Pyongyang defied U.N. resolutions and American threats by launching a missile that could deliver a nuclear payload to the West Coast.

Satellite intelligence showed that the North was also preparing for more nuclear tests, indicating they have no intention of stopping their development of more nuclear weapons.

“This pattern of offering carrots to North Korea, only to get smacked with sticks in return, has been going on for decades now, under both Republican and Democratic administrations,” he said in 2012.

“That is how the North got the bomb in the first place, engaging in ‘negotiations’ and dangling promises of cooperation in exchange for aid and time.”

Thornton said both North Korea and Iran “have been taught by the West that our threats, exception-riddled sanctions, and U.N bluster are all pretexts for an unwillingness to use force, which both regimes interpret as weakness.”

“An actual war on the Korean peninsula would almost certainly be the bloodiest America has fought since Vietnam—possibly since World War II,” Stossel wrote.

Pentagon experts, he said, have estimated that the first 90 days of such a conflict might produce 300,000 to 500,000 South Korean and American military casualties, along with hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths.

Another serious threat, he said, is that terrorists will detonate a nuclear bomb in an American city.

Stanton said North Korea should be on the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

“As long as North Korea suffers no adverse consequences for its terrorism, it will continue to murder human rights activists and dissidents in exile who risk their lives to bring us the truth about their homeland,” he wrote. ” In a land of scarcity, truth may be North Korea’s scarcest commodity of all. Sadly, the truth about North Korea is becoming increasingly scarce in Foggy Bottom, too,” he said, referring to the State Department.

‘A sea of fire’

The current crisis can be traced back to 1993 when North Korea declared that proposed International Atomic Energy Agency inspections of two of its nuclear sites would be violations of its sovereignty.

In June 1994, President Bill Clinton was preparing to evacuate American civilians from South Korea when word came that Jimmy Carter — who was in Pyongyang as an independent citizen — had reached a preliminary deal with the North Koreans.

In October 1994, the U.S. and allies South Korea and Japan signed an “Agreed Framework” with Pyongyang, providing North Korea with light-water nuclear reactors and with 500,000 metric tons of heavy fuel oil annually in exchange for freezing nuclear-weapons development.

Republicans in Congress slammed the agreement as “appeasement.”

It turned out that their skepticism was warranted.

In 2002, U.S. intelligence found that North Korea was secretly enriching uranium. Shortly thereafter, it restarted its plutonium program, reprocessing the 8,000 spent fuel rods it had kept in storage since the signing of the Agreed Framework.

A year later, Pyongyang said it had finished the processing, meaning, if the claim was true, it had enough fissile material for up to six new nuclear weapons.

The Bush administration responded by refusing to negotiate directly with the North Koreans, leading to six-party talks involving China, Japan, Russia and South Korea. But North Korea pulled out after the third round, demanding direct relations with the U.S.

In 2008, President Bush moved to save a failing disarmament agreement by removing North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism and lifting severe financial sanctions.

But Kim Jong Il reneged on the agreement.

In 2009, North Korean arms shipments that included 122- and 240-millimeter rockets and man-portable surface-to-air missiles were intercepted in Bangkok and Dubai on their way to Iran. The suspected recipients included Hamas, Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force, which had killed American soldiers in Iraq.

In 2010, North Korea sank a South Korean warship, killing 46 sailors, and shelled a South Korean fishing village, killing two Marines and two civilians. It also carried out cyber attacks and made threats against South Korean newspapers and television stations.

Beginning in 2011, North Korea launched an assassination campaign against its critics abroad, using syringes disguised as pens and loaded with lethal neostigmine bromide.

The murder just two months ago of Kim Jong Un’s half brother Kim Jong Nam in Malaysia by two woman who smeared a banned VX nerve agent on his face at an airport bears the marks of a such a plot. The assassination is believed to have been ordered by the dictator himself.

(DAILY MAIL) — Brian Williams was reprimanded by his boss at MSNBC for ‘patronizing’ host Rachel Maddow by thanking her for ‘visiting’ his newscast even though he had taken over her nightly time slot to report on the US missile strike in Syria earlier this month, it was claimed on Saturday.

Sources at the liberal-leaning cable news outlet said that Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC, ‘gave Brian a very stern rebuke, telling him “Don’t you ever do that again”,’ according to Page Six.

The former NBC Nightly News anchor was summoned to steer MSNBC’s coverage of the US Navy’s Tomahawk missile strike on Syria, which President Donald Trump ordered after the regime of President Bashar Assad was blamed for an attack on civilians with chemical weapons.